http://www.newnetworks.com/netneutrality fcc.htm

It will be interesting to see the subscriber numbers 2yrs from now when everyone who could move without penalty has that option. I predict ATT will suffer greatly for their arrogance and greed.

I mostly hate them because I have to load pages twice so frequently, and I suspect this is by design to limit data usage.

Another reason I hate them is because they charged me deposit fee to get this phone, but then six months later, when I wanted to add a line for my spouse after paying on time for six full months, they upped the deposit on that phone to 7 times the cost of the original deposit. They can suck it forever for that, and we got my spouse a T-Mobile plan as a result, which is where I will go when my contract is up.

This new move just adds fuel to my fire. I hope they go out of business in this economy, and will cheer if and when they do.

“Free ride ending for U.S. wireless bandwidth hogs”
http://blogs.reuters.com/columns/2010/06  /02/free-ride-ending-for-u-s-wireless-b andwidth-hogs/

I’m sorry – I got my information here: http://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/02/more -details-on-atandts-data-plan-changes-fo r-iphone-and-ipad/

It has an extensive q&a by TUAW and an AT&T spokesperson, and this was specifically mentioned:

“iPhone users can bump up from the $15 200 MB data plan to the $25 2 GB plan without penalty AS LONG AS THEY INITIATE THE CHANGE BEFORE THE END OF THE DESIRED BILLING CYCLE. This will allow users on the lower tier to simply bump up to the $25 plan as needed rather than having to pay $15 per additional 200 MB over the initial 200 MB limit. Users can then bump themselves back down for their next billing cycle. It is unclear at this time whether users on the higher tier will be able to drop down to the lower tier mid-cycle if they see that their data usage will be low for that period.”

Perhaps TUAW was given misinformation, but this answer pretty clearly says (to me at least) that you can retroactively change your plan during the current billing cycle. This, combined with (my hope of, at least) notifications when approaching the cap should make this pretty easy, even if not as easy as your suggestion, which I would also infinitely prefer.

Not trying to be an AT&T defender by any means – I’ve had enough dropped calls to ever allow for that – just trying to make sure people have information.

But can anyone tell me how many mb they are using per month on their iPad (not iPhone — even though the technology is the same, the iPad is clearly better designed for video than the iPhone)? I’d especially appreciate it if you would indicate for how many hours a day you typically use the iPad (i.e., just for your hour commute in each direction, non-stop, etc.)

Thanks.

It worked on me… we all get lofty ideas at times that another deal is right for us that actually costs less. That dang greener grass syndrome!!

There may be a lot to gripe about with bandwidth providers, but I think you are missing the gigantic issue, and in fact one of the major crises of our era:

Bandwidth providers are freeloading on the demand created by content providers. Bandwidth providers are doing just great financially, earning a ton of money. Meanwhile, content providers are fighting a losing battle just to get paid and not go out of business. Much of the media world has been going through an endless depression for the last decade or more. The decline most in media is a great loss for society.

For example, back in the late 1990′s, there is a prime example on how this affected two large networking companies. 3Com vs Cisco. 3Com was headed up by an engineer that told their customers how to use their products and how they should do networking. However, Cisco, headed by a salesman, got it. They listened to their customers and designed products that their customer wanted/needed. Look at what happened. Cisco become the dominate company and 3Com, well they are now owned by HP.